It’s been a tricky couple of years for the tv writers’ neighborhood.
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) revealed that the variety of TV writing jobs fell by 42% for the 2023/24 season. In a brand new report, the guild stated that there have been 1,819 tv writing jobs throughout this season with 1,319 jobs in comparison with the 2022/23 season.
This comes after the WGA spent months combating the studios for a brand new contract, one thing that the guild stated was partly responsible for the brand new statistics. Different causes included the decline in unique programming throughout the cable networks and streamers pulling again from the variety of reveals “as Wall Road calls for faster streaming platform income”.
There have additionally been a slew of cancelations and ending of reveals.
Most stark was the variety of jobs misplaced for showrunners and co-exec producers, which noticed 642 fewer jobs throughout the yr. There have been 378 fewer workers author, story editor and government story editor positions in comparison with the earlier season in addition to 299 fewer mid-level jobs, which embody co-producers, consulting and supervising producers.
There was a fairly precipitous fall because the 2018/19 season with 15,08 showrunners and co-exec producers in comparison with the 952 there have been final season.
The report was despatched to members by the WGA West board of administrators and WGA East council.
The WGA, which represents over 10,000 writers, went on strike between Could 2 and September 27 2023. The strike was the second longest strike within the guild’s historical past at 148 days, tied with the strike in 1960 however beneath the 153 days that the 1988 strike lasted. It coincided with the SAG-AFTRA strike, which ran from July 14 to November 9 2023.
